001Hi, my name is Chris Adler. I'm the director of human resources for the Sun Prairie Area School District. And this slideshow is focused on the hourly staff wage study update and recommendation uh to our Sun Pur Area School District School Board on the May 11th, 2026 schoolboard meeting. So before I go into the current study, I'll talk a little bit about the history of wage studies. We have an expectation here in the Sun Prairie Area School District in order to uh provide wage studies for each employee group uh at least once every four years. Uh and the reason it's once every four years is because we have four employee groups uh and wage studies uh per year um would take about a year to complete. Um and so we go through um specific list of
002professional educators, administrators, administrative support and support staff. And for the 2526 school year, as we prepare for 2627 school year, uh we are focused on our hourly staff, uh mainly support staff. There are a few employees still in our admin support group that are considered hourly. So the current study is um compared we compared every hourly role against the base wage paid uh by nine Dne County comparison school districts which are Oregon Stoton Middleton Cross Plains uh Met Madison Metropolitan Verona DeForest US Prairie Wanke and Manona Grove. Overall, uh, when we compared the base wages, and again, you can go into a little more detail in the schoolboard report, um, of these like roles in the Dane County comparison districts, our compensation for hourly roles were less than the Dane County market averages, uh, in
003almost every hourly role in our school district. We used a tiered methodology uh to figure out tiers of roles and the percentage um away from what we would consider Dne County market they fell. Uh so to ensure equitable adjustments roles were placed into those eight de tiers based on how far they below the market average they were. Um this was placed into 2.5% increments uh from the Dane County market for each role. The study confirmed a significant need for adjustments to maintain competitiveness to recruit, hire, and retain highquality hourly employees. uh the pay structure. Um what we're doing is we're recommending percentage based adjustments that honor experience just because if it's a percentage based obviously if you have your own wage multiplied against a percent it's you're going to have um a higher amount uh
004added to your wage based on a percent instead of just saying it's a flat rate for all uh people in a tier or even uh across the hourly staff wages. So, we felt like the percentage base made the most sense because it was most equitable. Uh, when we really think about it um in especially when we're considering respective roles that people play, the strategic funding uh is directly connected to the passage of the 20 2024 referendum which specifically uh earmarked funds support the findings of competitive uh wage studies and wages. Um, so year 1 in 2025-26, which that can get a little confusing to talk about because we're talking about this current school year, uh, will utilize $1 million of referendum funds with approximately 850,000 being focused on compensation and 150,000 focused on paying for
005w uh, Wisconsin retirement system, FICA, and Social Security attached uh, on top of those uh, increased wages. So again about uh 15% of uh what we do when we have wage studies like this needs to be set aside for WRS FICA and so uh social security. So a real quick explanation of our wage study tier system. Uh we can look at this graphic. So this graphic shows uh something that was shared with all uh hourly employees in our district um just last week so they could get an understanding of uh kind of where this wage study stood. So you can see there was eight tiers uh all the way from more than 17 and a half% below market to down uh to tier eight which is zero to about 2.5% below market. And when we
006talk about year 1 and year two, there's a reason behind that is because currently we're using again referendum funds focused this year $1 million towards competitive wages uh in focus with this wage study. uh year two uh because we do have some uh roles that again were 15 to 17 and a half% below market. We know that in year one, if you look to the right, you can see if you're in tier 1, you would get an increase of 8.75%. And you can see how it kind of goes down by tiers. And that's the equitable part of this. Um we know that 8.75% obviously does not equal 17.5%. Um, so we know that in year two, which is next year, 2627, we're going to have to reanalyze these uh wages against the Dayne County market
007that we've already, you know, those nine districts that we've earmarked to to focus on and find out again where we stand so we can cover the rest of that ground or as much as we can of that ground to get us closer to Dane County market. When we look at compensation tiers, uh again you can see that tier one would be adjusted 8.75%. Tier two is 7 7.25% and you can see how it changes as we go down the tiers. This graphic is specifically focused on what roles fell into what tier. Uh, one thing that you'll notice if you look at tier one and two, uh, many of those roles fall in either our facilities and grounds areas, um, or our nutrition services. Those are the areas that need the most adjustment in in comparison
008to Dne County um, market. And then you can see that tier three and tier four are focused a little. You'll see some facilities and grounds in there, but you'll and nutrition, but you're starting to see those school-based roles. Uh and tier five as well. So, when you're looking at tier three, uh you can see 4K assistant, greatness coach, instructional assistant. Those are kind of lumped into that that school-based. Uh on the right, we have an instructional assistant bilingual. And tier four, you can see those roles. And then tier five uh is where actually a large amount of our roles fell uh for tier five. Just for a timeline sake, uh so the wage study began in February in earnest. Um that began meetings with our hourly and support staff employee work group focused on the
009results of wage study and just kind of giving updates as best as we could as we kept getting results and analyzing the data. In April 2026, uh there was uh groups of small focus a small focus group of hourly and support staff just to discuss how best to communicate the wade study and what questions might come up so we can uh better proactively communicate uh the findings and what they actually mean uh in the coming year. May 1st uh we sent out general communication to all our support staff regarding the findings in the proposal. And then obviously we're proposing on May today May 11th uh the proposed wage adjustments based on the wage study brought to Sun to the Sun Prairie Area School Board for approval. Uh June 12th if approved um that retroactive pay
010will actually go back to July 1 of 2025 and then the new wages applied uh going forward. And then finally, winter and spring of 2027, uh the updated wages from the year 1 adjustments, uh if approved, uh and any other board approved adjustments like cost of living, uh will be reanalyzed against the same school districts from the year one, which is now, uh to determine if any further adjustments need to be made in order to continue to be competitive with the Dane County market wage rates that we've seen this year. So finally, uh, our recommendation is on behalf of the superintendent, the director of human resources, uh, recommends the approval of the recommendations as outlined, um, regarding the 2026 hourly staff wage study conducted in the spring of 2026, specifically focused on the first year
011of a two-year phased plan with year two adjustments taking place after reanalysis in the spring of 2027. Thank you for your time. and consideration.